The voice of a female pioneer in computing, someone who joined early and stayed in the business, is rare. Pat Britt worked on hardware and software already in the late 1950s, and continued to work as a software developer until she retired in 2014. "Pat Britt : The Universitey as a "Guide to Life" is an interview with first person accounts, letters, and poetry intersecting the dialog. Software is a poorly historicized area. Women in software is even more so. And yesterday was International Women's Day.
The main topic of the article is however broader: the role of education in the full perspective of a life. Pat's education shaped her life, and set her on a path of continuous learning; it became a life of many interests. These are her parting words of the interview:
Andreas Stiebe: You have explored the world and yourself during a lifelong journey. Circling back to Chicago, what is the place of education?
Pat Britt: I have come to embrace three interlocking views. First, the goal of a college should be preparing its students for a full life, not for a trade that will earn them a lot of money; that is the province of trade schools, apprenticeships, professional schools, etc.
Second, science, as a pursuit, not a compendium of memorized facts, and the humanities need to be part of that education, and afterwards part of life. If science is linear and limited, science it self will suffer. Most important discoveries in science are evoked by a sudden insight, not a simple progression from the known. Testing usually follows intuiting. It is no accident that particle physics is full of names like ’quark’ and even ’charm quark’.
Finally, as a species, we require the natural world. I agree with Joseph Campbell that we have lost our place in nature because we have lost our myths. I feel a need to balance reason with myth, but that may not be everyone’s choice.
Maybe the greatest value of my education is that it is also a preparation for life after work in the usual sense. Few of our friends, even in the generation after us, seem to be doing much with their lives once they retire. Regardless of whether my projects have worth, they certainly keep me involved in life.
A Swedish version of the article was published in Arche 70-71, in 2020. This English version contains additional material.
